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History will record the greatness of Michael Collins,” the Irish
president and patriot Eamon De Valera said as an old man in 1966, “and it will
be recorded at my expense.” Yes, and perhaps justly so, but even Dev could
hardly have imagined this film biography of Collins, which portrays De Valera
as a weak, mannered, sniveling prima donna whose grandstanding led to decades
of unnecessary bloodshed in, and over, Ireland.

“Michael
Collins” paints a heroic picture of the Irish Republican Army's inspired
strategist and military leader, who fought the British Empire to a standstill
and invented the techniques of urban guerrilla warfare that shaped
revolutionary struggles all over the world. Played by Liam Neeson in a performance
charged with zest and conviction, Collins comes across as a clear-sighted
innovator who took the IRA as far as it could reasonably hope to go, and then
signed a treaty with the British that was, he argued “the best we can hope for
at this moment in time.” The treaty established an Irish Free State, but it
preserved the division of Ireland into north and south, and it fell short of
the independent republic the IRA had been fighting for. Collins felt that
additional negotiations over a period of years could eventually produce those
gains; he and his comrades were weary of bloodshed.

But
De Valera (played with shifty conceit by Alan Rickman) refused to support the
treaty, and his decision led to an Irish civil war and, indirectly, to the
assassination of Collins. And today IRA bomb blasts still rock London, and the
peace that Collins hoped for has come only from time to time.

Was
De Valera (who led Ireland in various offices for most of the years between
1932 and 1973) really responsible for all these tragic consequences? Some argue
so, but others will find that “Michael Collins,” in need of an Irish villain to
balance the British enemy and explain the death of Collins, makes Dev into a
weaker and more devious man than he was. The film even implies, without quite
saying so, that Dev was aware of, or at least not adverse to, the plot against
Collins.

Such
questions will be much debated in Ireland, where the minutiae of IRA politics
and strategy are a cottage industry. For audiences elsewhere in the world, the
facts in “Michael Collins” will be less interesting than the characters and the
myths, and on that basis Neil Jordan's movie functions well, giving us a folk
hero known throughout Ireland as “The Big Fella,” who even with a price of
10,000 pounds on his head was able to bicycle through Dublin with impunity.

Partly
that was because no one knew, until he went to London to negotiate the peace
treaty, quite what Michael Collins looked like. There is a scene in the movie
where Collins audaciously presents himself at midnight to British Army
headquarters, says he is an informer, gains entrance, and works with an insider
(Stephen Rea) to copy secret information on British security forces.

The
film, which has the look and feel of authenticity, opens with a one-sided
British victory over IRA troops that tried to occupy Dublin's main post office.
Collins sees, correctly, that if the IRA adopts conventional tactics, it will
be destroyed by the British troops, and so he argues for a strategy in which
IRA men melt into the crowds, are indistinguishable from civilians, and
disappear after sudden strikes. This approach is good enough to force the
British to the negotiating table (despite the intransigence of Winston
Churchill), even though De Valera continues to argue for more conventional
methods; he seems to feel diminished by not leading a proper-looking army.

The
movie moves confidently when it focuses on Collins and his best friend and
co-strategist Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn). But it falters with the unnecessary character
of Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts), who is in love with both men, and they with
her. “I was ahead by a length,” Harry tells her in one scene. “Now where am I?”
She shakes her head: “It's not a race, Harry. You without him...him without
you...I can't imagine it.” The movie uses the scenes with Kitty to provide
obligatory romantic interludes between war and strategy, but even though Kitty
was a historical character, we never feel the scenes are necessary; they
function as a sop to the audience, not as additional drama.

Collins,
who died at 31, was arguably the key figure in the struggles that led to the
separation of Ireland and Britain. He was also, on the basis of this film, a
man able to use violence without becoming intoxicated by it. The film argues
that if he had prevailed Ireland might eventually have been united, and many
lives might have been saved. We will never know. But De Valera was right.
History has judged Collins at his expense.

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